According to experts from BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland, Poland’s economic outlook remains stable but the global geopolitical situation and high interest rates across Europe continue to hamper a quick rebound in commercial property trading and large-scale transactions. Last year’s results confirmed a fall in liquidity for the CRE sector in Poland.

According to the latest quarterly report by BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland, the closing months of last year saw heightened development activity and many retailer debuts on the Polish retail market. Retail parks accounted for 80% of the new retail floor space supply.

Although the office development pipeline in Poland’s eight largest regional city markets is clearly shrinking, it is still above that for Warsaw, says BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland in its laterst report. Another notable development of the last quarter of 2023 was that the overall regional vacancy rate hit an all-time high by the end of December.

The volume of vacant office space in Warsaw is shrinking as the number of office buildings under construction and delivered to the market is low and occupier demand remains stable, reveals BNP Real Estate Poland in its quarterly report. Meanwhile, older office buildings are undergoing refurbishment as approximately 70% of existing stock is energy inefficient.

How long will the cooling off in the investment market last? What are the main factors currently shaping demand? Which projects will banks lend money for today? In an interview with Property Forum, BNP Paribas Real Estate experts Małgorzata Fibakiewicz and Tomasz Arent summarised the current situation in the retail and warehouse sectors in Poland.

The end of the year for retail real estate in Poland was marked by a rise in inflation and the various consequences that followed it, increases in energy prices and the effects of the war in Ukraine.

The office market in Cluj-Napoca is the second largest in Romania following the one in Bucharest and there are eight office buildings with a total leasable area of 130,000 sqm under development that will be completed by 2025, according to real estate consultancy Fortim Trusted Advisors, part of BNP Paribas Real Estate Alliance. 

BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland has summarized the first three months in the Polish investment market and pointed out, among other things: reduction in investors' appetite and waiting caused by the war in Ukraine, combat with inflation, rising commodity prices, as well as a hesitant start of the year in the sector of logistics and industrial investments.

Between the pandemic, the war, rising prices and increasingly frequent warnings of recession — these are the conditions in which the retail sector operated in the first quarter of 2022. The authors of the cyclical report from BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland point out, among others: continued strengthening of the position of discount store chains and growing interest in facilities with a high potential for modernization, expansion and repositioning.

Office Warsaw faces major challenges: deteriorating macroeconomic indicators, rising construction and utility costs, and upward pressure on rents and service charges. In addition, there are delays resulting from broken supply chains, the spectre of a supply gap and a strong reshuffling in the demand structure. On the other hand, the capital city market reports a quarterly record in lease agreements signed and attracts an IT giant that buys one of the newest office-mixed use complexes; all this is according to the summary of the first quarter in the Warsaw office market prepared by BNP Paribas Real Estate Poland experts.